Online car-hire search drops consecutively from June through to September

London, 15 December, 2009 - The number of
car-hire related searches made by UK-based consumers online,
dropped between June-September, reveals a new report by Greenlight,
the UK's leading independent search marketing agency. According to
the report 'Car Hire Sector Report - Q3 2009', of the 5.8 million
searches for car-hire related terms over the period, 1.5 million
occurred in September. However, this was a 25% drop when compared
to August volumes and 34% down on July's. The report also reveals
that some key players in this sector have slid down the ranks in
the Greenlight league table which charts the 60 most visible
websites for car hire per quarter.

Greenlight's report used industry data to classify 356 of the
most popular global destinations that people in the UK travel to.
The independent research profiled the search terms used to find car
hire companies in each location and how popular each search term
was. The data was then used to rank the most visible brands on page
one of Google's search results.

According to the report in September, the top 3 most popular car
hire-related terms that UK-based consumers searched for online were
'Car hire' (13%), 'Car rental' (5%) and 'Car hire UK' (3%).

Accounting for 476,000 searches, European destination-based
terms were the most searched for by UK consumers, accounting for a
31% share compared to 18% for the UK & Ireland, 9% for North
America and 5% for the Far East and Australasia.

Greenlight's research determined the best positioned, and hence
the top 60 most visible websites and brands in the UK Car Hire
sector, based on the search volumes for each keyword, and their
respective ranking on page one of Google UK, for both natural* and
paid search.**

In natural search, the three most visible car hire websites to
UK consumers were CarRentals followed by Travelsupermarket then
Easycar, achieving 54%, 40% and 32% share of voice in September,
respectively.

By contrast, EuropeCar and AnyCarHire fell three places in the
league table due to a decrease in visibility of 6% and 5%
respectively. In the previous quarter, they held fourth and fifth
position in Greenlight's top 60 most visible websites for car hire.
Both sites lost ground to more aggressive competitors such as
Enterprise and Hertz.

Despite its huge offline presence, Avis failed to improve on its
Q2 search visibility. It remained visible to just 21% of UK online
car hire searches in September.

"The car hire sector is notoriously competitive with competition
up, down and across the supply chain, which is partly aided by the
ease with which data and systems can be scraped, integrated,
white-labelled and syndicated", said Warren Cowan, CEO at
Greenlight. "This has resulted in a market where brands are
competing with their direct competitors and agents, as well as
having all their affiliates in tow. Consequently, rankings are
difficult to achieve."

In terms of paid search, CarHire3000 was the most visible
advertiser in September, achieving 73% share of voice of the top 90
key words analysed. Of the top 10 advertisers, six were direct
providers and four were aggregators. This contrasts with natural
search where seven were agents/aggregators, which included the top
two most visible websites: CarRentals and Travelsupermarket.

The analysis of consumer search behaviour revealed considerable
surges in activity early in the week with particular hot spots
during the lunch period and after work. Surprisingly, many
advertisers did not seem to be taking advantages of these surges,
maintaining relatively consistent levels of advertising
activity.

In relation to search bidding strategies, Greenlight's research
reveals that none of the advertisers recognised the importance of
increased consumer search activity on Mondays and Tuesdays. Neither
did they recognise the importance of bidding during either the
'lunchtime spot' of 12pm to 2pm, or the 'after work slot' of 6pm to
8pm.

Cowan concludes:

"Interestingly, we have seen in other verticals, such as
insurance, the top advertisers achieve considerably more visibility
in the natural search space. By contrast, our research revealed the
opposite in the car hire sector, since the majority of brands
focused on paid search."